Language, Thinking, and Intelligence

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Chapter 8Language, Thinking, and Intelligence
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Language

• Communication the sending and receiving of
  information
• Language the primary mode of communication among
  humans
• A systematic way of communicating information
  using symbols and rules for combining them
• Speech oral expression of language
• Approximately 5,000 spoken languages exist today.

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Language the Brain

• Brocas area small clump of neurons near front
  of brain
• Influences brain areas that control the muscles
  of the lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate, and vocal
  cords during speech thus, Broca's area is
  important in language production.
• May also be involved when using grammatical
  language rules in both producing and
  comprehending sentences.
• Wernickes area connected by nerve bundle to
  Brocas area
• Important for language comprehension

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Brocas Wernickes Areas
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Do Animals Use Language?

• Since 1930s, numerous attempts have been made to
  teach language to a few select species.
• The most appropriate conclusion to draw
• Nonhuman species show no capacity to produce
  language on their own, but
• Certain species can be taught to produce
  languagelike communication.

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Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

• Language acquisition learning vs. inborn
  capacities
• Behaviorisms language theory
• People speak as they do because they have been
  reinforced for doing so.
• Behaviorists assumed children were relatively
  passive.
• The problem with this theory is that it does not
  fit the evidence.
• Operant conditioning principles do not play the
  primary role in language development.

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Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

• The nativist perspective
• Language development proceeds according to an
  inborn program.
• Language Acquisition Device (Noam Chomsky)
  humans are born with specialized brain structures
  (Language Acquisition Device) that facilitates
  the learning of language.
• Interactionist perspectives
• Propose environmental and biological factors
  interact together to affect the course of
  language development.
• Social interactionist perspective strongly
  influenced by Lev Vygotskys writings

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Infants Born Prepared to Learn Language

• Assessing the three perspectives on language
  acquisition
• General consensus
• Behaviorists place too much emphasis on
  conditioning principles.
• Nativists dont give enough credit to
  environmental influences.
• Interactionist approaches may offer best possible
  solution.

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Stages of Language Development

• All human languages are composed of
• Phonemes smallest sound units in speech
• Morphemes smallest units that carry meaning

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Stages of Language Development

• Language development begins with children using
  primitive-sounding phonemes.
• One-word stageuse only one-word phrases.
• Consequently, they overextend their
  wordsapplication of the process of assimilation.
  
• By the age of 2two-word stagebegin using two
  separate words in the same sentence.
• A phase of telegraphic speech begins.
• Child-directed speechmotherese
• Parents help infants recognize specific language
  forms and skills necessary for future language
  learning by the way they talk to them (slowly,
  high pitch, simple words, heightened expression).
  

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development - Four
Stages

• Jean Piaget contended that cognitive development
  occurs as children organize their structures of
  knowledge to adapt to their environment.
• A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge
  that people use to understand and interpret
  information.

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development - Four
Stages

• Acquisition of knowledge occurs through the
  complementary processes of assimilation and
  accommodation.
• Assimilation the process of absorbing new
  information into existing schemas
• Accommodation the process of changing existing
  schemas to absorb new information

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Piagets Stages

• Sensorimotor stage (birth2 years)
• experience the world through actions (grasping,
  looking, touching, and sucking)
• One of the major accomplishments at this stage is
  the development of object permanence.
• Preoperational stage (26 years)
• represent things with words and images but
  having no logical reasoning

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Piagets Stages

• Concrete operational stage (711 years)
• think logically about concrete events
  understanding concrete analogies and performing
  arithmetic operations
• Formal operational stage (12 yearsadulthood)
• develop abstract reasoning

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The Three-Mountains Problem
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Conservation
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Conservation of Mass
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Conservation of Number
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Piagets Conclusions Have Been Questioned

• Development may be less stagelike than he
  proposed.
• Children may achieve capabilities earlier than he
  thought.
• All adults may not reach formal operational
  thought.

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Evaluating Piaget

• Despite criticisms, most developmental
  psychologists agree that Piaget has generally
  outlined
• An accurate view of many of the significant
  changes that occur in mental functioning with
  increasing childhood maturation and
• That children are not passive creatures merely
  being molded by environmental forces, but that
  they are actively involved in their own cognitive
  growth.

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The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

• Does language determine thought?
• Benjamin Lee Whorfs linguistic relativity
  hypothesis
• Proposed that the structure of language
  determines the structure of thought (without a
  word to describe an experience, you cannot think
  about it).
• However, research indicates that just because a
  language lacks terms for stimuli does not mean
  that language users cannot perceive features of
  the stimuli.
• The answer is no. Most psychologists believe in
  a weaker version of Whorfs hypothesisthat
  language can influence thinking.

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Thinking

• Thinkingcognition
• The mental activity of knowing
• The processes through which knowledge is acquired
• The processes through which problems are solved

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Concept Formation

• Concept a mental grouping of objects, ideas, or
  events that share common properties
• Concepts enable people to store memories in an
  organized fashion.
• Categorization is the process of forming
  concepts.
• We form some concepts by identifying defining
  features.
• Problem with forming concepts by definition is
  that many familiar concepts have uncertain or
  fuzzy boundaries.

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Concept Formation

• Thus, categorizing has less to do with features
  that define all members of a concept and has more
  to do with features that characterize the typical
  member of a concept.
• The most representative members of a concept are
  known as prototypes.

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When Is It a Cup, and When Is It a Bowl?
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Fuzzy Boundaries

• Determine whether something belongs to a group by
  comparing it with the prototype.
• Objects accepted and rejected define the
  boundaries of the group or concept.
• This is different for different people.

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Problem-Solving Strategies

• Common problem-solving strategies
• Trial and error trying one possible solution
  after another until one works
• Algorithm following a specific rule or
  step-by-step procedure that inevitably produces
  the correct solution
• Heuristic following a general rule of thumb to
  reduce the number of possible solutions
• Insight sudden realization of how a problem can
  be solved

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Internal Obstacles Can Impede Problem Solving

• Confirmation bias the tendency to seek
  information that supports our beliefs, while
  ignoring disconfirming information
• Mental set the tendency to continue using
  solutions that have worked in the past, even
  though a better alternative may exist
• Functional fixedness the tendency to think of
  objects as functioning in fixed and unchanging
  ways and ignoring other less obvious ways in
  which they might be used

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The Candle Problem
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Decision-Making Heuristics

• Representativeness heuristic
• the tendency to make decisions based on how
  closely an alternative matches (or represents) a
  particular prototype
• Availability heuristic
• the tendency to judge the frequency or
  probability of an event in terms of how easy it
  is to think of examples of that event

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Decision-Making Heuristics

• Five conditions most likely to lead to heuristic
  use
• People dont have time to engage in systematic
  analysis.
• People are overloaded with information.
• People consider issues to be not very important.
• People have little information to use in making a
  decision.
• Something about the situation primes a given
  heuristic.

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Intelligence

• Intelligence consists of the mental abilities
  necessary to adapt to and shape the environment.
• Intelligence involves not only reacting to ones
  surroundings but also actively forming them.

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Early IQ Testing Shaped by Racial/Cultural
Stereotypes

• British Sir Francis Galton founded the eugenics
  movement to improve the hereditary
  characteristics of society.
• Eugenics proposed that
• White and upper-middle-class individualswho were
  assumed to have high mental abilityshould marry
  and have children.
• Lower-class Whites and members of other races
  who were assumed to have low mental
  abilityshould not reproduce.

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Early IQ Testing Shaped by Racial/Cultural
Stereotypes

• Unlike Galton, French psychologist Alfred Binet
• Made no assumptions about why intelligence
  differences exist.
• Believed intellectual ability could be
  increased through education.
• Over Binets objections, American Henry Goddard
  used Binets intelligence test to identify the
  feebleminded so they could be segregated and
  prevented from having children.

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Aptitude Achievement Tests

• Two categories of mental abilities measures
• Aptitude tests measure capacity to learn new
  skill
• Achievement tests measure what is already
  learned
• Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) measures
  learned verbal and mathematical skills
• SAT scores influenced by quality of test takers
  schools
• Difference in intent/use of the test

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Aptitude Achievement Tests

• Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test the widely used
  American revision of the original French
  intelligence test.
• Intelligence quotient (IQ) originally, the ratio
  of mental age to chronological age multiplied by
  100 (MA/CA ? 100).
• Today, IQ is calculated by comparing how a
  persons performance deviates from the average
  score of her or his same-age peers, which is 100.
• Wechsler Intelligence Scales the most widely
  used set of intelligence tests, containing both
  verbal and performance (nonverbal) subscales

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Test Standardization

• Process of establishing uniform procedures for
  administering a test and interpreting its scores
• Reliability the degree to which it yields
  consistent results
• Validity the degree to which a test measures
  what it is designed to measure
• Content validity
• Predictive validity degree to which test results
  predict other behaviors or measures

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The Normal Distribution
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Are intelligence tests culturally biased?

• Critics claim that Whites and higher SES
  individuals have had greater exposure than ethnic
  minority and lower-class individuals to topics on
  most commonly used IQ tests.
• Supporters of IQ tests respond that although IQ
  tests do not provide an unbiased measure of
  cognitive abilities, they do provide a fairly
  accurate measure of academic and occupational
  success.

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What is Intelligence? One or Several Distinct
Abilities?

• One of the primary questions about the nature of
  intelligence is whether it is best conceptualized
  as
• A general, unifying capacity or
• Many separate and relatively independent
  abilities.

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What is Intelligence? One or Several Distinct
Abilities?

• British psychologist Charles Spearman concluded
  there was a general intelligence, or g, factor
  underlying all mental abilities.
• Louis Thurstone argued there were seven primary
  mental abilities
• Reasoning, verbal fluency, verbal comprehension,
  perceptual speed, spatial skills, numerical
  computation, and memory

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What is Intelligence? One or Several Distinct
Abilities?

• Howard Gardners theory of multiple intelligences
  contends that intelligence consists of at least
  eight independent intelligences
• Linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial,
  musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist,
  interpersonal, and intrapersonal

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What is Intelligence? One or Several Distinct
Abilities?

• Robert Sternbergs triarchic theory of
  intelligence proposes that intelligence consists
  of analytical, creative, and practical abilities.
  
• Research still supports both perspectives
• There is evidence that we have distinct mental
  abilities and a general intelligence factor.

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Sternbergs Triarchic Theory of Intelligence
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People Differ in Their Neural Complexity
Quickness

• Brain size has a moderately high correlation (r
  .44) with IQ scores.
• Some neuroscientists point to the fact that
  larger brains have more neurons than do smaller
  brains.
• Another possibility brain size-IQ correlation is
  related to different levels of myelin in the
  brain.

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People Differ in Their Neural Complexity
Quickness

• Intelligence is partly based on neural
  complexity, quickness, and efficiency.
• Additional studies suggest that smarter brains
  become more efficient with practice.
• These findings suggest that intelligence is a
  product of both our biology (nature) and our
  experience (nurture).

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People Differ in Their Neural Complexity
Quickness

• Extremes of intelligence
• Diagnosis of mental retardation given to people
  who
• Have an IQ score below 70 and also have
  difficulty adapting to the routine demands of
  independent living.
• Only 1-2 percent of the population meets both
  criteria.
• Males outnumber females by 50 percent

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People Differ in Their Neural Complexity
Quickness

• Extremes of intelligence
• About 75 percent of mental retardation cases
  thought to result from unfavorable social
  conditions or subtle and difficult-to-detect
  physiological effects
• Remaining 25 percent of cases considered to have
  a specific organic cause, such as fetus or infant
  exposed to harmful substances
• Down syndrome caused by an extra chromosome
  coming from either the mothers egg (the primary
  source) or the fathers sperm.

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People Differ in Their Neural Complexity
Quickness

• The gifted category used for IQs above 130 or 135
  
• U.S. federal law designates that giftedness
  should be based on superior potential in any of
  six areas
• General intelligence, specific aptitudes (for
  example, math and writing), performing arts,
  athletics, creativity, and leadership

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Twin and Adoption Studies of Intelligence

• Twin studies indicate that the average
  correlation of identical twins IQ scores is .86,
  while fraternal twins correlation is .60.
• Fraternal twinswho are genetically no more
  similar than regular siblings, but who are
  exposed to more similar experiences due to their
  identical ageshave more similar IQ scores than
  other siblings.
• In addition, nontwin siblings raised together
  have more similar IQs (r .47) than siblings
  raised apart (r .24).

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The Nature-Nurture Debate
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Twin and Adoption Studies of Intelligence

• Adoption studies
• Children who were adopted within 2 weeks to 1
  year of birth have higher IQ correlations with
  biological parents than with adoptive parents.
• Based on twin and adoption studies
• Heredity accounts for a little over 50 percent of
  the variation in intelligence, and
• Environmental factors account for a little less
  than 50 percent.

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Figure 8-12 Reaction Range
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Gender Differences in IQ Scores

• Gender differences male and female IQ scores are
  virtually identicalfew differences in certain
  aptitudes
• Females tend to do better on verbal aptitude
  tests, while males tend to do better on
  visual-spatial tests.
• Gender differences have also been found in
  mathematical ability.

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Gender Differences in IQ Scores

• Some studies suggest female-male differences in
  verbal and spatial abilities might be linked to
  differences in the organization of brain areas
  controlling verbal and spatial abilities and to
  hormonal fluctuations
• Other studies suggest that these differences are
  a product of gender socialization and the
  different skills taught to girls and boys.

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Group Differences in IQ Scores

• African Americans score between 10 and 15 points
  lower than White Americans and Asian Americans.
• Hispanic Americans achieve IQ scores somewhere in
  between those of Blacks and Whites.
• Asian Americans score about 5 points higher than
  White Americans.

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Group Differences in IQ Scores

• These IQ test differences also occur on nonverbal
  test items that do not appear to be culturally
  biased against ethnic minorities.
• Numerous studies suggest that it is highly
  unlikely that genetic differences between the
  races cause these group IQ differences.

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Racial Differences in IQ Scores
Sources Data from N. J. Mackintosh. (1998). IQ
and human intelligence. Oxford Oxford University
Press. Neisser, U. (1998). The rising curve
Long-term gains in IQ and related measures.
Washington, DC American Psychological
Association.
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Plant-Pot Analogy
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Cultural Factors May Explain Group IQ Differences

• Studies in various countries indicate that
  involuntary minorities achieve lower IQ scores
  than voluntary minorities.
• Many social scientists believe that the primary
  causes are
• Persisting negative cultural stereotypes within
  the dominant culture concerning involuntary
  minorities intellectual abilities
  (self-fulfilling prophecies), and
• The self-protective defensive reaction many
  involuntary minority members subsequently develop
  against the rejecting mainstream culture
  (oppositional identities).

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Cultural Factors May Explain Group IQ Differences

• Stereotype threat disturbing awareness that your
  task performance might confirm that you
  personally fit the negative stereotype
• According to Claude Steele, when highly motivated
  minority students take an IQ test worry that a
  low score will confirm a mentally inferior
  stereotype, the added pressure significantly
  hinders their performance.
• Many studies inform us that negative stereotypes
  can create damaging self-fulfilling prophecies
  among members of many different social groups by
  inducing stereotype threat.

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Performance and Stereotype Threat
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Cultural Factors May Explain Group IQ Differences

• Intellectual growth is nurtured when parents and
  the larger culture stress the
• Value of education and
• Importance of working hard to achieve
  intellectual mastery.
• Intellectual growth is stunted when cultural
  beliefs impress upon the child that their
  academic success is either
• Unlikely (due to negative cultural stereotypes)
  or
• Not highly valued (due to it being incompatible
  with other cultural values).